Bali Artilce

The advent of mass tourism in the past few decades in Bali has had a considerable impact on the physical appearance of Denpasar, the island`s capital, and the principal tourist destinations of Nusa Dua, Kuta, Candi Desa, Lovina and Ubud.

The enormous injection of foreign money into the island`s economy, combined with the need to cater for the requirements of these visitors from overseas, has inevitably caused changes to the built environment.

The Bali Beach Hotel at Sanur marked a rather ominous start to the tourist boom, being a singularly unimaginative piece of Modernist architecture in the so-called International style whose eight storeys dominate the skyline of what would otherwise be an idyllic tropical shore. It is hard to imagine a building less in sympathy with the local surroundings, both architectural and natural.

Fortunately, since the early Seventies, when this excrescence was put up, there has been a conscious attempt to respect the essential character of Balinese architectural style wherever possible. Many international hotels have successfully modeled their chalet-style accommodation on Balinese pavilions, albeit with a few extra facilities thrown in such as running water and air-conditioning, while other regional forms have also been adopted and adapted to extend the range of building types in Bali. The layout and landscaping of the Bali Hilton, at Nusa Dua, for example, recalls the Javanese palace or kraton, while the Indies-style architecture of the colonial era provides a historical precedent for an imaginative syntesis of Indonesian and European architectural traditions.

Of course, the appropriation and the manipulation of local forms for new applications runs the risk of trivialising or otherwise corrupting traditional architectural values-the inappropriate use of temple structures is a case in point-and it is important for architects and developers to consult Balinese building experts (undagi) when planning a new project. At the same time, the incorporation of local elements as adornment for structures that would otherwise be entirely utilitarian or functional encourages the tendency towards pastiche, which similarly devalues local architectural traditions. Both these tendencies are evident in Bali.

Fortunately, there are also a great many instances of truly inspired designs that incorporate the best of traditional Balinese architecture. The Amankila Hotel in Karangasem, for example, with its limpid pools and colonnades, is early modeled on the idea of a traditional Balinese water garden. In this instance, the lily ponds and floating pavilions are entirely in keeping with the pursuit of leasure and relaxation, recalling the enthusiasms of the last ruler of Karangasem who was responsible for building three such complexes at Taman Ujung, Tirtagangga and Jungutan.

Compound Layout

The massive expansion of tourist shopping facilities in recent years has seen the development of a new type of building in the Balinese architectural repertoire, the shophouse (ruko). Clearly modelled on the traditional Chinese shophouse found in every Indonesian town and indeed all over Southeast Asia, the ruko (the world is a conflation of rumah, meaning house, and toko, or shop) is nonetheless a very Balinese creation.

One distinctive feature of the ruko is the location of the family temple (sanggah) on the roof. This seemingly incongruous marriage of the old and the new actually makes perfect sense in terms of traditional Balinese architectural principles, which require that the sanggah occupy the highest level in the domestic compound.